Remnants of ’80s youth culture—a leather studded
bracelet, hooded sweatshirt, worn jeans, and purple Doc Marten
boots—adorn the teenage girl in Sue de Beer’s photographic work,
Tina (1999). Stuck in midair, Tina is crammed into the high corner between two bare
walls and the ceiling. Her arms and legs dangle towards the floor, yet her
expression remains blank.

Common sense tells you the scene is simulated. A close look
at the edge of the photograph reveals a glimpse of the unfinished wood frames
supporting the stage set walls. To establish the illusion, the set has been
built upside down: an old film trick. The image alludes to a scene from Wes
Craven’s grisly masterpiece A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) in which
Tina Grey’s body is dragged across her bedroom ceiling by the phantom
Freddy Krueger before, and after, her murder.

Most of de Beer’s photographs evoke specific moments
as well as generalities from the horror genre—one that is quite unique
for its obvious, at times funny, yet still terrifying fakery. An obsession with
gory tales is nothing new for this photographer, filmmaker, and performance artist.
This time around, however, de Beer’s project revolves around the formal
details of professional slasher film production.

The artist’s imitations are purposefully low-tech: the
stage sets have been built imperfectly to pronounce their artificiality. The
artist relies on deliberate quirks and distortions built into the sets, as well
as plenty of fake blood and guts, to further align the work with the movies she
references. The bizarre pictures possess a haunting aura heightened by their
muted color palette, head-on point of view, and flat, even lighting.

While de Beer’s characters share a disaffected
demeanor, their bodies are frequently severed, and the disparity between calm
and gruesome intensifies the surreal aspect of the work. In Sasha (1999), a
young woman’s lower torso has been dismembered as she lies in bed, calmly
enjoying a cigarette. Noticeably, de Beer has not sufficiently cropped the
image, and a glimpse of the actor’s leg is revealed from under the bed
sheets at the bottom of the photograph. In examining artistic practice and the
vehicles of popular culture, Sue de Beer revels in the phony.